27 May 2005
Internet Cafe
Odessa, Ukraine

Greetings to all subscribers of the listserves, colleagues and
friends.

I want to send a brief note from Odessa arriving today at 3:30
pm from
Budapest, Hungary on MALEV Hungarian Airlines. All tour members
are doing
well and in good health. They are anxious to visit the ancestral
former
Black Sea and Bessarabian German villages of their ancestors.

Our stay in Budapest for 25-27 May was a wonderful experience in
a
beautiful city including our evening boat ride on the Danube River
to see
night lights. Tour members visited about how some of our ancestors
came to
the Black Sea villages near Odessa starting in Germany.

On 28-29 May tour members will go village visits including overnight
stay
in the Bessarabian villages and in the Glueckstal villages. Other
tour
members will make day trips to visit Neu Kassel, Hoffnungstal Guldendorf,
and the Kutschurgan District villages - Strassburg, Kandel, Selz,
Strassburg, Braden and Elsass.

On 28 May, there will be gathering of local folks and tour members
at the
former Catholic church in the village of Selz, Kutschurgan district.
Then
we will have lunch at the home of Louisa Riesling, a German woman
who
restored the home of her parents returning to Selz in the early
1990s.
Louisa knows much of the history of Selz and has a brother living
in
Germany today. She speaks German and Russian languages. Louisa is
still
waiting to immigrate to Germany.

On 29 May, we will visit additional villages for day trips while
other
tour members return from the Bessarabian and Glueckstal villages.

We can already see changes in Odessa. The new customs center at
the
airport is much improved, much easier with Ukrainian Customs, and
much
more friendly than it was in our previus 10 Journey to the Homeland
Tours
including the ability to secure the Ukrainian Visas right at the
Odessa
Airport.

So now I say good bye and all the best from Odessa from our tour
members
and myself,

Michael M. Miller

Permission
to use any images from the GRHC website may be requested
by contacting Michael
M. Miller